Life of Robert Browning [39]
truth: but his comrade must see to it
that he is content with the wide liberal air of the common day.
The poetic alchemist may turn a sword into pure gold:
the playwright will concern himself with the due usage of the weapon
as we know it, and attribute to it no transcendent value,
no miraculous properties. What is permissible to Blake,
painting Adam and Eve among embowering roses and lilies,
while the sun, moon, and stars simultaneously shine,
is impermissible to the portrait-painter or the landscapist,
who has to idealise actuality to the point only of artistic realism,
and not to transmute it at the outset from happily-perceived concrete facts
to a glorified abstract concept.
In this opening monologue the much-admired song, "All service ranks the same
with God," is no song at all, properly, but simply a beautiful short poem.
From the dramatist's point of view, could anything be more shaped for disaster
than the second of the two stanzas? --
"Say not `a small event'! Why `small'?
Costs it more pain than this, ye call
A `great event', should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!"
The whole of this lovely prologue is the production of a dramatic poet,
not of a poet writing a drama. On the other hand, I cannot agree
with what I read somewhere recently -- that Sebald's song, at the opening of
the most superb dramatic writing in the whole range of Victorian literature,
is, in the circumstances, wholly inappropriate. It seems to me
entirely consistent with the character of Ottima's reckless lover.
He is akin to the gallant in one of Dumas' romances,
who lingered atop of the wall of the prison whence he was escaping
in order to whistle the concluding bar of a blithe chanson of freedom.
What is, dramatically, disastrous in the instance of Mertoun
singing "There's a woman like a dew-drop", when he ought to be
seeking Mildred's presence in profound stealth and silence, is, dramatically,
electrically startling in the mouth of Sebald, among the geraniums
of the shuttered shrub-house, where he has passed the night with Ottima,
while her murdered husband lies stark in the adjoining room.
It must, however, be borne in mind that this thrilling dramatic effect
is fully experienced only in retrospection, or when there is knowledge
of what is to follow.
A conclusive objection to the drama as an actable play is that
three of the four main episodes are fragmentary. We know nothing
of the fate of Luigi: we can but surmise the future of Jules and Phene:
we know not how or when Monsignor will see Pippa righted.
Ottima and Sebald reach a higher level in voluntary death
than they ever could have done in life.
It is quite unnecessary, here, to dwell upon this exquisite flower of genius
in detail. Every one who knows Browning at all knows "Pippa Passes".
Its lyrics have been unsurpassed, for birdlike spontaneity
and a rare high music, by any other Victorian poet: its poetic insight
is such as no other poet than the author of "The Ring and the Book"
and "The Inn Album" can equal. Its technique, moreover, is superb.
From the outset of the tremendous episode of Ottima and Sebald,
there is a note of tragic power which is almost overwhelming.
Who has not know what Jakob Boehme calls "the shudder of a divine excitement"
when Luca's murderer replies to his paramour,
"morning?
It seems to me a night with a sun added."
How deep a note, again, is touched when Sebald exclaims,
in allusion to his murder of Luca, that he was so "wrought upon",
though here, it may be, there is an unconscious reminiscence
of the tenser and more culminative cry of Othello, "but being wrought,
perplext in the extreme." Still more profound a touch is that where Ottima,
daring her lover to the "one thing that must be done; you know what thing:
Come in and help to carry," says, with affected lightsomeness,
"This dusty pane might serve for looking-glass,"
that he is content with the wide liberal air of the common day.
The poetic alchemist may turn a sword into pure gold:
the playwright will concern himself with the due usage of the weapon
as we know it, and attribute to it no transcendent value,
no miraculous properties. What is permissible to Blake,
painting Adam and Eve among embowering roses and lilies,
while the sun, moon, and stars simultaneously shine,
is impermissible to the portrait-painter or the landscapist,
who has to idealise actuality to the point only of artistic realism,
and not to transmute it at the outset from happily-perceived concrete facts
to a glorified abstract concept.
In this opening monologue the much-admired song, "All service ranks the same
with God," is no song at all, properly, but simply a beautiful short poem.
From the dramatist's point of view, could anything be more shaped for disaster
than the second of the two stanzas? --
"Say not `a small event'! Why `small'?
Costs it more pain than this, ye call
A `great event', should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!"
The whole of this lovely prologue is the production of a dramatic poet,
not of a poet writing a drama. On the other hand, I cannot agree
with what I read somewhere recently -- that Sebald's song, at the opening of
the most superb dramatic writing in the whole range of Victorian literature,
is, in the circumstances, wholly inappropriate. It seems to me
entirely consistent with the character of Ottima's reckless lover.
He is akin to the gallant in one of Dumas' romances,
who lingered atop of the wall of the prison whence he was escaping
in order to whistle the concluding bar of a blithe chanson of freedom.
What is, dramatically, disastrous in the instance of Mertoun
singing "There's a woman like a dew-drop", when he ought to be
seeking Mildred's presence in profound stealth and silence, is, dramatically,
electrically startling in the mouth of Sebald, among the geraniums
of the shuttered shrub-house, where he has passed the night with Ottima,
while her murdered husband lies stark in the adjoining room.
It must, however, be borne in mind that this thrilling dramatic effect
is fully experienced only in retrospection, or when there is knowledge
of what is to follow.
A conclusive objection to the drama as an actable play is that
three of the four main episodes are fragmentary. We know nothing
of the fate of Luigi: we can but surmise the future of Jules and Phene:
we know not how or when Monsignor will see Pippa righted.
Ottima and Sebald reach a higher level in voluntary death
than they ever could have done in life.
It is quite unnecessary, here, to dwell upon this exquisite flower of genius
in detail. Every one who knows Browning at all knows "Pippa Passes".
Its lyrics have been unsurpassed, for birdlike spontaneity
and a rare high music, by any other Victorian poet: its poetic insight
is such as no other poet than the author of "The Ring and the Book"
and "The Inn Album" can equal. Its technique, moreover, is superb.
From the outset of the tremendous episode of Ottima and Sebald,
there is a note of tragic power which is almost overwhelming.
Who has not know what Jakob Boehme calls "the shudder of a divine excitement"
when Luca's murderer replies to his paramour,
"morning?
It seems to me a night with a sun added."
How deep a note, again, is touched when Sebald exclaims,
in allusion to his murder of Luca, that he was so "wrought upon",
though here, it may be, there is an unconscious reminiscence
of the tenser and more culminative cry of Othello, "but being wrought,
perplext in the extreme." Still more profound a touch is that where Ottima,
daring her lover to the "one thing that must be done; you know what thing:
Come in and help to carry," says, with affected lightsomeness,
"This dusty pane might serve for looking-glass,"